Character extracting apparatus, method, and program

Abstract

The present invention provides a technique of accurately extracting areas of characters included in a captured image. A character extracting device of the present invention extracts each character in an image with compensated pixel values. In more detail, the character extracting device integrates pixel values at each coordinate position in the image along a character extracting direction. Then, the character extracting device predicts the background area in the image based on the integrated pixel value. The compensated pixel values are compensated based on integrated pixel values at the predicted background area from integrated pixel values at each coordinate position.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to a technique for extracting a character area from a captured image. [0003] 2. Description of the Related Art [0004] By capturing an image of characters printed on a commodity or product with an image acquisition device, for example, a two dimensional image acquisition device using a CCD, CMOS or the like, and performing a character recognizing process in an image processing apparatus, a process of recognizing the print can be automated. [0005] To perform the character recognizing process with high precision, a character extracting process as a pre-process of the character recognizing process is important in the image processing apparatus. [0006] The character extracting process is a process of determining a character area included in a captured image. In a case where a captured image includes a character string made of a plurality of characters, each of the character areas correspondi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015] In view of the above problem in the conventional technologies, an object of the present invention is to provide a technique of accurately extracting areas of characters included in a captured image where increasing of the volume of the process tasks is restrained.

[0020] The present invention allows a character extracting device to extract each character in an image accurately even in a case where uneven brightness occurred in the image due to the influence of a lens feature of a capture device or an illumination, and the like.

[0021] The present invention also allows a character extracting device to extract each character in an image accurately even in a case where the characters are closer to each other.

Problems solved by technology

However, since a lateral portion of the character “T” has smaller integrated pixel value as compared with the longitudinal portion's one and, at the lateral portion, the light amount provided from an illumination device (not shown) is lower than the other areas' one, the corresponding portion of the waveform data91 for the lateral portion becomes below the threshold 92 and thus it is difficult to recognize the lateral portion as a character area.

However, such a shading compensation process requires a longer processing time, so total processing time for extracting character areas takes longer.

Further, as another problem, when a distance between the characters is narrow, it is difficult to recognize the character areas.

The method allows the image processing device to extract each character area accurately even if the characters are closer to each other, however, the method has a problem that a process to choose the path takes a long time.

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